Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, pursuant to the Answer of 8 November 2018 to Question 186934, whether the Committee on Climate Change's response to the IPCC report on global warming of 1.5 degrees will be permitted to include recommendations on (a) the cost effectiveness and (b) the benefit to the climate of amending the fourth or fifth carbon budget to provide more rapid reduction of the UK’s carbon emissions in line with the timeframe recommended by the IPCC.

The Committee on Climate Change’s (CCC) focus for this particular advice will rightly be on our long-term targets, including the costs, benefits and deliverability of more ambitious targets.

Although government has asked the CCC not to consider formally carbon budgets four and five as part of this commission, they have been asked for evidence on how reductions in line with the CCC’s recommendations might be delivered in key sectors of the economy.

If the CCC considers that the most effective way of communicating this information is through a cost-effective pathway (which could include the years captured by carbon budgets four and five), they may incorporate that information into their advice.